A senior state department official said that the US would resume nuclear tests to match “opaque” Chinese activity, flagging new details about a 2020 test the US recently accused China of secretly conducting, as US President Donald Trump seeks a new trilateral nuclear control deal with China and Russia.
“As the president has said, the United States will return to testing on an ‘equal basis’,” Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control and Nonproliferation Christopher Yeaw said on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute.
“But equal basis doesn’t mean we’re going back to Ivy Mike-style atmospheric testing in the multi-megaton range,” Yeaw added, referring to the first thermonuclear bomb the US detonated in 1952. “Equal basis, however, presumes a response to a prior standard. Look no further than China or Russia for that standard.”
Yeaw’s remarks came amid a nuclear control vacuum the world recently found itself in after the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), the world’s last binding nuclear arms control agreement, expired on February 5. Trump has refused Moscow’s offer to extend the treaty for another year as he argued for a “better agreement” that includes China.
A day after Trump floated his idea for an “improved” three-way deal, US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Thomas DiNanno said at a conference in Geneva that China had failed to disclose a 2020 nuclear test.
The US detected a seismic event of 2.75 magnitude on June 22, 2020, right near China’s Lop Nur nuclear test site, Yeaw elaborated.
Yeaw said that as a scientist, he had “personally examined the data” and that he concurred with the US government’s assessment on the alleged Chinese nuclear test.
“There is very little possibility that it is anything other than an explosion, a singular explosion,” Yeaw said. “It is quite consistent with what you would expect from a nuclear explosive test of a certain yield.”
The US government’s reading could not tell exactly what the yield was from the test, but it was “pretty obvious” that it was supercritical, he said, adding that there is “complete opacity on the part of the Chinese”. How US tests would achieve “equal basis” would be determined by President Trump, he confirmed.
“We know that they were preparing tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tonnes, so that’s a basis,” Yeaw said. “And what the president decides to do with that is up to him.”
The New Start treaty “constrained the US while allowing China to remain completely unconstrained”, and after February 5, the US is “no longer bound by” its limits, according to Yeaw.
“The president has the opportunity at this point to build up a credible, modernised nuclear deterrent as he wishes,” he said.
The Chinese Embassy in the US did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said last week that the US had “persistently distorted and smeared” China’s nuclear policy and that the accusation was “an excuse” to justify US plans to return to nuclear testing.
Robert Floyd, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation, said in a statement on February 6, that its International Monitoring System did not detect any event consistent with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon test explosion on June 22, 2020.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said in a report on February 13, that satellite imagery it studied of the Lop Nur site did not provide any conclusive findings to support or disprove US allegations about China’s test.
The US will keep trying to bring China into a new nuclear arms control deal, according to Yeaw.
“The president certainly wants China in this agreement,” he said. “I don’t know exactly the path that we will take to get there ... I don’t think anyone is under any illusions that this will be easy.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
